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Not fit for man nor beast

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If you think it's high now,wait until next year.I can get 1200lb bales of Hay Grazer delivered for $73 a bale.Maybe you could send a couple trucks down for a load?It's really good small stem grazer.I personally like to buy it and let it sit a year before I feed it.It stores well because it sheds rain good if you don't have a barn.The bad thing is,it's 5x5.5 bales so they may not truck well once they leave Texas.Don't know what the law is for 10ft wide loads outside of Texas
 
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leanin' H said:
I saw some small bales down here that were selling for $478 a ton after I did the math on weight and price per bale 😳🤬
It's gouging pure and simple. But how can a guy do anything about it?
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I did see some alfalfa for $270 a ton. But it was in Hermiston which is probably a $30 haul from here. So $300 a ton laid in. Can't afford to feed old cows for that much.
I watched a bunch of about 150 head bred cows sell on Thursday. No one else must have hay. They sold pretty cheap for what they were. The top sold for $1,135. They were good looking solid mouth black cows that weighed 1,300. They came from Imnaha which is basically the edge of Hell's Canyon. Guarantee they have seen steep ground. A year ago those cows would have been $1,500. An order buyer took the top off them. I think they are headed for California.
 
That's terrible. We just could not gouge our hay customers. We were short of hay and we added $50/ton to our normal price and we could have sold it for $150 over our normal price but...we just couldn't do that to people. We have to look at ourselves in the mirror.

Back in 2012 or 2013 there was a drought in New Mexico among other places in the south and some hay brokers needed hay for a guy in New Mexico. So we sold it for what we normally do. We have no idea how much the hay jockeys marked it up and we never did ask. When the trucks came to get it, they were guys who worked for the end buyer so I got his name and talked to him. He was concerned about the hay because he had gotten every kind of sorry hay you can imagine. He was trying to keep his cowherd together.
We lived in SE MT at the time and when he asked me about the hay I told him it was green but not like irrigated hay but it was good hay. He told me he had just gotten a couple of truckloads of hay out of Sturgis SD that was slough grass hay and he didn't know what he could do about it.
After he got and fed our hay he called and told us how nice it was and how well the cows liked it. Then he called us later on and said his cows gained weight on our hay and he thanked us for sending good hay.

We have had to buy hay before and you can get really ripped off by hay sellers. We bought some that was supposed to be 1400# round bales. When Mr. FH unloaded it he didn't think they were that heavy. We had put a scale under our bale processor so he had a good idea of hay weight when he was feeding. I think that scale cost $2500 extra when we bought the bale processor. The scale showed the bales Mr. FH fed through it weighed much less. So he took a flatbed trailer load to town and weighed on the scale there. Same story. So we called the seller and told him what we had found and that we weren't going to pay for 1400# bales on that hay and the rest of what we had spoken for. He agreed and sent the rest of the hay at the real weight, not what he thought they weighed. That scale paid for itself on that one deal alone.
 
A friend of mine told me he paid $85 a bale for wheat straw. They probably weigh 1000 pounds a round bale. I dont know if that was on the field or if the guy delivered for that price.
Last year I could have baled all the barley straw in the world and sold it on the field at a small profit for $20 a bale but nobody wanted it. Sure glad that I baled a bunch of it for myself because thats all that is saving us this year.
 
I just paid $98/ton for some creeping red fescue grass straw. Vegetable screening and irrigated stockpile pasture will be our saving grace
 
Big Muddy rancher said:
I hate buying hay, what ever we manage to put up seems to be better then most we buy,
I bought 3 big loads of suncured alfalfa pellets at $300. tonne plus $35 /tonne trucking. Fed in the bunk there is very little waste.
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Is that from picture butte Alberta?
I used to buy their cubes for an old horse. Cows can't eat the cubes. But you say you got pellets.

I have about enough feed until March but it just doesn't make any sense for me to buy much feed at the going rates. Right now a 600 lbs calf is worth about $1100. I wonder what that calf will be worth next year?
 
Evans said:
Is that from picture butte Alberta?
I used to buy their cubes for an old horse. Cows can't eat the cubes. But you say you got pellets.

I have about enough feed until March but it just doesn't make any sense for me to buy much feed at the going rates. Right now a 600 lbs calf is worth about $1100. I wonder what that calf will be worth next year?
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That is nothing to sneeze at. Calves around here brought $900 to $1000.
 

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